


morphine at my door

by battleshidge (Amiria_Raven)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Arguments, Drama & Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, ft. singing lance and moping keith, they argue over a stupid thing and Drama ensues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 07:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8836165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amiria_Raven/pseuds/battleshidge
Summary: He missed him.Keith missed Lance.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a one-shot I've been working on off and on for about three weeks now! It happened when I couldn't get "It Will Rain" by Bruno Mars out of my head. This song is the inspiration for the whole fic, so of course Lance has to sing part of it.
> 
> If you ask nicely, I might be a derp and record me singing a verse of it just for funsies and put it on my Tumblr. If you wanna kill your eardrums. :)
> 
> Anyway, hope you guys enjoy! :D

For the fourth day in a row, Keith woke up to the sound of rain beating a melancholy melody against his windowpane.

He didn’t know why it sounded so gloomy. Usually, the rain didn’t bother him in the least. It was inconvenient at the most, and sometimes left him shivering in wet clothes, but it never left him with the weird sense of dread that made its home in the pit of his stomach.

Frowning, Keith pulled his covers up and rolled over to face the wall, hoping to ignore the feeling of unease and get a few more hours of sleep.

It all hit him as he stared at the expanse of his bed before him.

There’d been no disgruntled whines when he’d tugged the covers to himself. No movement in the bed as someone shifted over, closer to him, in order to steal some of his warmth. And as he stared at the pillow on the other side of his queen bed, the fraying blue pillowcase out of place in a sea of red and white linen, he remembered.

It had been five days since he had drawn the line.

Five days since he’d broken off possibly the best relationship he’d ever had, turning a smile he loved into a distraught grimace. He’d watched impossibly blue eyes start to shine and it had broken his heart.

Lance had taken it with much more grace than Keith had expected, considering that they had just had the argument to end all arguments and Keith had been fed up. He hadn’t even asked _why_ , though he’d probably been dying to beg for answers. And then he’d gathered only a few things–his laptop, his phone, the extra PlayStation controller he’d brought over–and left.

His copy of the apartment key was still sitting where he’d dropped it when they’d entered, on the little end table by the door.

Keith closed his eyes and sighed heavily, pushing himself into a sitting position. It was only just past five in the morning, but he wouldn’t be getting any more sleep. Not with thoughts of Lance swimming through his mind, plaguing his waking moments with thoughts of the what ifs and could-have-beens.

_What if I’d never said those things? What if I had realized what I was doing before he left and had stopped him? What if I apologized?_

_Lance could have been here next to me when I woke up. We could have been arguing over something as silly as the color of the placemats at the table or who had to do the dishes after dinner._

A gust of wind rattled the windows, and a fresh onslaught of rain pelted against the glass.

 _This_ , Keith decided as he dropped his feet over the edge of the bed, _is what divine punishment must feel like_.

If there was a higher being, they were probably laughing at him. Laughing every time he looked at the empty side of the bed and Lance’s favorite blue pillowcase, feeling like he’d made the biggest mistake in the world. Chuckling when he stumbled into the bathroom after a few too many drinks on that first night, slumping against the sink and catching sight of the toothbrush with the blue handle, still in its place right next to his own red one, or when he saw all the soaps and shampoos and conditioners lining his shower that he would _never_ have purchased of his own free will–and the memory of Lance very gently washing his hair for him, his slender fingers massaging Keith’s scalp with a tenderness he didn’t think he deserved.

He remembered Lance even sneaking to the underground rings, where the illegal bot fights that they’d first met at took place, and all the nights they’d spent out on the town, searching for a new place with their crude bots in hand. And on the second night, when he went to his favorite venue, all he could remember was his first meeting with Lance as rival bot operators across the ring, all bravado and naivety, or how they’d shared their first kiss behind the truck that was serving overpriced Solo cups of beer.

There were traces of Lance _everywhere_ he turned.

A pair of boxers tucked in Keith’s underwear drawer, or a t-shirt thrown haphazardly across the top of the dresser, both garments the same shade of blue as their owner’s eyes. A hastily scrawled note on top of a container of leftovers in the fridge, telling him to have a good day at work. Even a cactus in the living room window, growing stout and prickly in a meticulously hand-painted blue pot, was a constant reminder of the conversation they’d had about having a pet. It was a long talk about the pros and cons of pets after which they’d settled for a plant because there was less maintenance and, as Lance boasted, a plant would make the apartment more homey.

He didn’t understand at the time how a _cactus_ would help with that, but it had grown on him.

Keith dragged a hand through his hair with a groan, wrenching his fingers through a few tangles as he forced himself to his feet. He’d slept in and he had work in an hour, so he needed to get ready.

* * *

 

He’d left his wallet at home.

Keith learned it the hard way when he fumbled for it in his pockets to find money for his lunch. When he realized what he’d done, he cursed vehemently under his breath and removed himself from the line at his favorite deli, reaching for his phone. He’d just give Lance a call and–

He froze, the realization sinking in that he couldn’t do that anymore.

Keith didn’t even bother to finish fetching his phone. Instead, he dropped his arm limply to his side, ignoring the numbness spreading through him. He pulled his shoulders in and ducked his head as turned to leave the shop, pulling his hood up and shoving his hands into his hoodie pocket.

Suddenly, Keith forgot how he’d even been hungry in the first place.

Logically, he knew he should eat something. He’d barely eaten in the last several days and it was starting to show. But Keith Kogane was nothing if not stubborn, and he somehow convinced himself that he wasn’t hungry as he slipped back into the store he worked at. He poured himself a cup of coffee in the employee break room and told himself it was just as filling as any meal could have been, and he focused so hard on not thinking about food that he _almost_ believed he didn’t need sustenance.

* * *

 

The rain continued through the night and all the next morning.

It was Keith’s day off, and he had started off the day with a relaxing shower and Netflix...only as he went to watch the next episode of _The Walking Dead_ , he paused. He and Lance were watching it together, after all. Or they had been, before Keith had told him to leave.

The next show on his _Continue Watching_ list was _Desperate Housewives_ , and he was positive it wasn’t on there because of him. He instinctively went to remove it, or at least try to, because if he wasn’t going to watch it he didn’t need to see it cluttering his list, but his hand faltered on the control. _This_ , his mind whispered poisonously, _might be the last thing you have left of him_.

And he sank into his couch, hot cup of coffee clutched in his hands as he started a show he’d never thought he’d be interested in.

He still wasn’t interested in it–he just wanted to see if he could figure out why Lance liked it so much. And maybe, though he wouldn’t dare admit it, Keith wanted to feel closer to Lance again, to fill the empty place in his life once more.

Despite the fact that Keith didn’t know _anything_ about the show, he found himself only moving to refill his coffee and grab a blanket to snuggle under. After a while, he found himself digging out what remained of a pint of Lance’s favorite ice cream, and stubbornly tried to ignore the tang of salted caramel on his tongue and the resulting memories of the last time he’d tasted it in the midst of a searing kiss.

His eyes burned, and he blamed the women on his TV screen, even though his mind was filled with a man that smiled like the sun and laughed like a warm spring breeze.

One episode, two episodes, three episodes. Keith had lost count after a while, lost in a strange haze of something akin to helplessness. The feeling spread through his body the longer he sat, filling his limbs with lead. It was as though he was being weighed down by the sense of loss that he finally found flooding through him.

He missed him.

_Keith missed Lance._

He’d missed people before, but those times had always been fleeting. He would realize that those who had left him weren’t worth the love and care he’d given them, especially if they would leave so easily. And so he learned to forget. But forgetting _Lance_ …?

When everything around him was a reminder of all the time they had shared together? When Keith couldn’t bear to throw even the silliest reminders of him away, how could he ever forget? When a hidden corner in one of the kitchen drawers was filled with all the sticky notes that Lance had left on the tupperware containers that had held Keith’s lunches, wishing him a great day and lots of love, or when he washed his hair with the shampoo that Lance had left, just so the familiar scent stayed with him, how was he supposed to move on?

Keith wanted to scream.

He wanted to throw the empty ice cream container at the TV, cancel his Netflix so he wouldn’t have to see traces of Lance’s guilty pleasures all over the place. He wanted to bury his face in his pillow and shout out all of his frustrations. But most of all, he wanted to understand why he couldn’t just forget like he used to.

His time with Lance was irreplaceable, and Keith would never change any of it. So _why_ did he have to tell Lance to _leave_ and that it was all over? Why did he have to lose his temper so easily when Lance was really only trying to show that he was worried about Keith?

To argue about the illegal bot fighting they sometimes did for extra cash wasn’t unusual. Lance often joked that Keith could go into the pro circuit, to legitimize his talent for it without risking retribution from the law, but applying for the license and building a bot that worked with legalized specs wasn’t cheap. He did it for extra income, so why would he turn around and pay the equivalent of six wins to for just the license, and more for the bot itself?

And before that night, Lance had been affronted at Keith’s dismissal of joining the pro circuit and argued back, but eventually relented with a sigh and a forced, “Whatever, babe,” that meant he was through with the discussion.

 _That_ night, though, Lance had been fed up and Keith had been in a bad mood and it had all blown up when Lance accused Keith of being _scared_ to go pro. Of being _scared_ that they were better, that their bots were badder, and that their money would make all the difference. That Keith was _afraid_ of trying something because, for the first time in a long time, there was a very real possibility of failure.

Lance’s voice, his features, as he shouted came back to Keith’s mind, and with a groan he buried his face in his hands and let the words wash over him again. It must have been the thousandth time he’d relived them.

 _“Allura and Coran have offered to sponsor you so many times, Keith. To expand their one bot team to two, so that you and Shiro could do singles or duos if you wanted to try it. And on top of that, you have Hunk and Pidge. You know they’d build your bot in a heartbeat, and even if they did it with scrap metal and twine, it’d still be three times as good as something you paid big bucks for straight off the assembly line,” Lance’s face twisted in fury, “and you’re still too chicken to take a chance! What do you have to_ lose _aside from a little money, Keith?”_

Keith remembered the way his temper had flared, the way he’d shouted, _“Everything! I’d lose everything!”_ and he lamented how childish it had been.

“ _That’s a damn lie and you know it,” Lance hissed back, taking a fistful of Keith’s black t-shirt and yanking him closer. “The only thing you’d lose aside from money is some of your_ pride _.”_

He didn’t want to remember anymore, but the words kept reverberating in his head. This time, it was his own voice, and his tone had been a low growl. They tormented him, those words.

 _“Get out._ ”

Lance had blinked at him for a minute, his infuriated expression flickering with confusion. He hadn’t moved except for to drop his hand from Keith’s shirt, and Keith had been too mad to focus. He had pushed against Lance’s chest, forcing him to stumble back, and spat his words with such venom that those blue eyes he loved had immediately widened with shock and then softened with pain.

“ _Get the fuck out and don’t come back. I’m done with this. I’m done with_ you _._ ”

Keith shoved himself to his feet, ignoring the Netflix stream of _Desperate Housewives_ that was still going on. He needed to move, to do something to get the words and the actions and the _everything_ from that night out of his head. Maybe he could go grab that bottle of vodka he had just picked up when he went shopping after work–

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

Keith’s first thought was, _I didn’t order a pizza_ , and then with a glance at the time–nearly ten at night–his second was, _Who the fuck comes unannounced at this time of night?_

Grumbling to himself, he let his blanket pool around his feet and stepped out of it. He tried to search his mind for any plans he’d forgotten, or anyone who would just show up. His friends were usually good about calling ahead, especially Hunk, Shiro, and Allura. The one who wasn’t very good at asking permission to drop by probably wouldn’t ever come over again, though, so–

– _why was he at the door?_

Peering through the lens, Keith couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Lance couldn’t be standing outside, soaked to the bone as if he had just _walked_ from halfway across town in the rain and in the dark, and looking down at his feet. It couldn’t be him, because even though Lance loved the rain, he hated the cold. The temperature was probably in the mid forties, Fahrenheit, and Lance McClain was one of the first people to gripe about the chill as winter set in, so it couldn’t possibly be him. And though Lance liked walking well enough, he’d never walk in the dark. He said it would ruin his beauty sleep.

But Keith found himself reaching for the deadbolt, pulling it back and opening the creaking door as not-Lance raised his head.

His short brown hair was plastered down, sticking to his cheeks and his forehead and his neck. His familiar green jacket was much the same, as was the shirt beneath it and the faded jeans he wore. Even though he was soaking wet, he didn’t make a move to dive across the threshold like he would have just a week previously. His usually blemish-free face was marked with a few small red bumps, and there was a nick on his chin from a shaving slip, and the bags under his eyes could rival the ones that Keith wore.

His blue eyes glittered in the light pouring from Keith’s apartment, and he had to acknowledge that, even though it _couldn’t_ be Lance, it _was_.

There were no words that Keith could say–no apologies springing to his lips, no invitations for him to come inside out of the cold and out of the wet or to dry off and take a shower so he didn’t catch his death. Only silence and the sound of rain in the streets, the barely audible rush of breath between them.

Only silence, until Lance awkwardly cleared his throat and his raspy voice met the air with the melodic lilt of a song.

 _“If you ever leave me, baby,_  
Leave some morphine at my door.  
‘Cause it would take a whole lot of medication  
To realize what we used to have,   
We don’t have it anymore.”

Any words Keith might have started to form would have lodged firmly in his throat at the tender, pleading sound of Lance’s voice. And then–to Keith’s surprise–Lance slid to his knees and continued singing, and the song finally clicked in the back of his mind.

He listened, scarcely able to breathe, as Lance ended the song after the first chorus, his conviction growing stronger as he voiced the words, “ _If you walk away, every day it will rain, rain, rain, ra-a-a-ain.”_

Words just tumbled from Keith’s lips without prompting.

“It did rain every day, idiot.”

Lance laughed, but it sounded more like a hiccup, and Keith reached forward to grab his hand. He didn’t know what he was doing, but as he tugged the lanky young man to his feet and through the door, he knew that it felt _right_.

He didn’t care that his shirt soaked up water from Lance’s sodden clothes when he wrapped his arms around his waist, or when Lance dropped his arms around Keith’s shoulders. He didn’t care that a small puddle was forming on the floor in front of the door. He didn’t even care very much about the soft sound of surprise and the teasing, _“Aw, I knew I could get you to watch_ Desperate Housewives _,”_ that fell from Lance’s lips easily, as if nothing had ever happened.

All Keith cared about was that Lance was here, he was _back_ , and he was blaming himself. And that he might catch his death if he stayed in those wet clothes any longer.

“I’m sorry,” he finally managed, his voice cracking in the middle, pulling away from his sodden boyfriend. “I’m sorry for everything. I was being stupid, and you’re right, I just–”

A cool finger pressed against his lips, silencing him, and Lance reached into his pockets, fumbling for a few minutes with the clinging, wet material. Keith kept his mouth closed as Lance seemed to find what he was looking for, and after a few seconds, he was pushing a small card into Keith’s hands.

A license.

“All that it needs is your signature on the back,” Lance said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “And on the official papers at the office, but since it was a gift we have like, thirty days to do that. But that’s why I got really mad at the way you kept pushing the illegal bot fights. And because I _know_ you’re better than that, and you can do _more_ than that, and so I filled out all the paperwork for you and saved up for a few months to put in the deposit and I even have Hunk and Pidge already almost finished with a pro-specs bot and Allura’s got the paperwork ready to sign if you wanna join Team Voltron and I’m just really sorry that I was pushing you, and you can turn it down if you really don’t want it, but–”

This time it was Keith that lightly placed a finger over Lance’s mouth.

“I’m so sorry, Lance,” he repeated, and then with a smile that couldn’t fully convey the warmth he was feeling, he added, “Thank you.”

The happiness that diffused across Lance’s face in that moment filled Keith with an urge to pull Lance back into his arms again, to apologize over and over until Lance could accept him back. He could continue apologizing all night if that’s what it took, and Keith was rarely one to admit that he’d been wrong.

And so he did, pulling Lance by his sodden sleeve and facing no resistance, wrapping his arms once more around his boyfriend’s middle and murmuring a string of apologies even as Lance returned the gesture and assured him that _it’s nothing, mi amor, I’m just happy to be back,_ and that _it’s okay, I forgive you. Lo siento, babe, I was out of line_.

Eventually, Lance ended up in dry clothes. They ended up curled together on the bed, talking about nothing and yet everything all at once, and Keith had never felt more at home.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can hit me up on Tumblr at [battleshidge](http://battleshidge.tumblr.com) or on my main blog at [panda013](http://panda013.tumblr.com). Don't be shy! :D


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